1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electro-optical device such as a liquid crystal display device, to a method of manufacturing an electro-optical device, and to an electronic apparatus having the electro-optical device.
2. Related Art
An electro-optical device has been widely used in electronic apparatuses such as a mobile phone and a handheld terminal. For example, the electro-optical device has been used as a display unit of an electronic apparatus in order to visually display various information items. The electro-optical device includes a liquid crystal display device using liquid crystal as an electro-optical material.
The liquid crystal display device has a liquid crystal panel serving as an electro-optical panel. The liquid crystal panel has a structure in which, for example, a liquid crystal layer is interposed between a pair of substrates each having electrodes. In the liquid crystal display device, the alignment of liquid crystal molecules within the liquid crystal layer is controlled for each pixel by supplying light to the liquid crystal layer and controlling a voltage applied to the liquid crystal layer for each pixel. The light supplied to the liquid crystal layer is modulated according to the alignment states of the liquid crystal molecules, and the modulated light is supplied to a surface of a polarizer facing liquid crystal. As a result, images, such as characters, numbers, or figures, are displayed on a viewing-side surface of the polarizer.
The liquid crystal panel described above has an effective display region where an image is displayed and a peripheral region which is a peripheral region of the effective display region and does not contribute to the display (for example, see JP-A-2003-262856 (page 8, FIG. 1)). In addition, an alignment layer is formed on the electrodes, which are provided on each of the pair of substrates forming the liquid crystal panel, over the effective display region and the peripheral region. For example, the alignment layer may be formed by coating polyimide in a printing method.
In the electro-optical device disclosed in JP-A-2003-262856, various components, such as an insulating film, are stacked on the surfaces of the substrates forming the liquid crystal panel. Here, a case may be considered in which the height of the stacked components in the peripheral region is larger than that in the effective display region. For example, in a so-called multi-gap structure, when the thickness of a liquid crystal layer within one pixel is set to be different, the peripheral region may be higher than the effective display region. In this case, since a material of the alignment layer coated on the peripheral region flows into the effective display region, there is a possibility that the alignment layer will be formed thick at a boundary portion between the effective display region and the peripheral region. If the alignment layer is formed thick at the boundary portion between the effective display region and the peripheral region, the thickness of the alignment layer is not uniform at the effective display region and thus the alignment failure occurs at a portion where the alignment layer is formed thick. As a result, there is a possibility that the display brightness will become non-uniform.